Category: career coaching

A few years back I took a class she taught called Ab-Blast. Mostly, it was a grueling hour of contorting your body into all sorts of strange positions twice a week for 5 weeks in an effort to strengthen your core muscles.

I was ready to quit after the first class but I’d paid sixty dollars to be there and a small voice inside of me that sounded an awfully lot like my dad kept shouting You made a commitment!

I was the oldest person in the class. Oldest by a few miles. My partner for our warm ups was a twenty something who had enough energy and enthusiasm to light up a small town.

She told me I reminded her of her grandfather and kept telling me to take it easy.

I toughed it out until the last week. The last week was devoted to forming and holding a plank. If you aren’t aware, a plank is when you put your entire body parallel to the ground, lift up about six inches and hold it for thirty seconds. It’s supposed to strengthen your core muscles. Build character and all that stuff.

Uhm Okay.

It wasn’t working too well for me. I kept falling flat on the mat after about 3 seconds, so I devised a work around, so -to-speak.

I sorta scooted my butt up in the air a bit so I looked like an bridge rather than a plank. It took the pressure off of my core muscles and made me feel a bit more comfy.

Comfy not healthy

Brandy was walking around encouraging us and when she got to me she leaned over really close and whispered

The only person you’re cheating, John, is yourself

With that she firmly put her foot on my lower back and pushed.

Embarrassed?

Humiliated?

Sure was.

What happened early that morning long ago has never left my thoughts for very long.

Taking the short cut, cheating, phoning it in – call it what you will only provides us with a false sense of who we are or what we can do. I’ve come to discover it is one of the more selfish things I can do.

There have been times I’ve been tempted to take the short cut and when I do I remember what she told me. The only person I am cheating is me. I’m robbing myself of an opportunity to grow.

I’ll leave it there

Oh yeah. I don’t see Brandy very often anymore but when I do I make it a point to thank her. She just smiles.

A trainer fastens a chain to its ankle and anchors the chain to a stake in the ground. The elephant is conditioned to stop when the chain provides resistance. Once trained as a baby this elephant who has the power to tear the stake out of the ground, doesn’t. It’s been trained and conditioned to accept limitation and it behaves that way for the rest of its life.

Ever seen how huge and powerful an adult elephant is?

They should easliy remove the stake and ramble and amble wherever it chooses.

But it doesnt.

Somewhere deep inside the elephants mind, when the chain pulls taught it reminds it there are limits to where it can go and what it can do.

And what it can’t do.

It’s been conditioned.

Just like me and you.

Someone or a bunch of someones told us we couldn’t or shouldn’t.

So we didn’t

I am tempted to write another ten paragraphs telling you why we behave the way we do, but ya know what?

We already know.

Breaking that chain, metaphorical or real is a matter of how strongly we believe in our own power and passion. In our lives, our careers and our businesses, we decide what we’ll accept as a limitation and what we won’t let hold us back from our goals and dreams.

I’ve been wanting to share my thoughts on the “new” marketing for some time.

Why?

I know some really honest people, chock full of integrity, not so much concerned about earning seven figures as they are getting paid for the value of what they share with the rest of us and as importantly making a contribution. Remember that passion and enthusiasm that got you started?

Then, there are the others.

I thought they’d largely vanished. They are the folks who still poke and prod, get up in our faces and suggest that we never really belonged at the cool kids lunch table anyway. They’ve located our pain and they have the answer.

I had an experience the other day that caused me to write this post.

YouTube videos are my friends. Any time I’m stuck I’ll do a search and viola, there are a host of experts willing to share their thoughts with me. Some of them have made me look like I knew what I was doing , especially when it came to fixing things around the house

The other day I was interested in learning how people were using YouTube videos as a way to build their email list. After a few abortive tries I found one that looked pretty interesting. I hit pause, went for a cup of tea, settled in and punched “resume.”

The content was exactly what I was looking for and I even registered to receive the free gift the presenter offered if I’d share my email address.

I did. I know the drill. To get something you have to give something. No problem.

I knew what was coming next. It’s called the squeeze. You have my attention, you’ve plied me with all sorts of free stuff, now it’s time to reach into my pocket……….. Again, I do not have a problem with this.

It’s called sales and it is not a dirty word.

I read the landing page I was sent to. Again, good stuff. But………….Not anything I needed right now. I book marked it for future reference. Just in case.

Now, people respond to rejection one of two ways:

When I get notice through my provider that someone didn’t click though or left in the middle of reading something I’ll respond by telling them I’m sorry they aren’t interested and one last time in an appropriate way, share the benefits of what I am offering. I close by telling them I hope they enjoy my newsletter or blog or whatever it is they gave me access to their email for.

See, that email address is gold. They may not need the program I am currently offering but down the road something may be of interest to them and they may investigate further.

(Did I tell you one of my motto’s is “Measure progress with a calendar not with a stop watch!”)

The second way of responding to rejection was how I was treated. I received an email that suggested I’d never reach my life or business goals as long as I made the choice not to enroll. As a matter of fact, I was told I was now part of the 99% who didn’t want to work hard and make commitments. It was my loss.

The cool kids lunch table was getting father and farther away.

But ya know what? That’s how they wanted me to feel. They wanted me to feel hurt. They wanted me to lift my tear stained eyes and admit I had it all wrong.

They were my hope and salvation.

There was still time to act.

Let me ask you something?

How do you want to be treated?

Do you want a thank you, see you later, hope we can connect down the road and if not no worries.

Or

Do you want to be told you’re a quivering mass of failure who’ll never amount to anything.

The old way of marketing suggests I find your pain and exploit it. The new way of marketing suggests I find your strengths and passions and celebrate them.

There might even be a happy dance involved.

New Career Creations blends the disciplines of business, career and life coaching to assure their clients have the best opportunity to be successful in all areas of their lives and careers. We partner with you to create those possibilities. A Heroes Journey is published on Tuesday at 7:30 AM CST. You can contact us at John@NewCareerCreations.com

He never went along with the crowd and if the prevailing notion of the day lined up with what he believed, so be it. If it didn’t, as he often said, “tough toenails.”

He knew a lot about a lot of things but you never heard him make you look bad. If he thought you were wrong he’d put it in the form of a question and allow you the opportunity to back track a bit and save face.

In the fifty seven years that I knew him, he only recommended one book for me to read. It was Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends and Influence People. He, himself, never had a problem in that area.

When I was old enough I worked summers in the factory he began his career in as a timekeeper. When people saw my name they’d ask me if “Are you Tom’s boy?” I never heard a negative word about him. This high praise came from men who found fault with the good Lord himself.

Don’t ever try to negotiate something with him when he believed his position was the right one. He was never mean or nasty. He simply held his ground and if you didn’t agree, after awhile he’d shake your hand and walk away. No hard feelings.

You could never convince him to do something he didn’t believe 100 percent in. Contrary to my mothers exhortation NOT to have opinions, my father had them and he held firm to them.

If you are thinking I am beginning to make a case for sainthood you’d be wrong. I came of age in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. He and I disagreed on a lot of things especially the War in Vietnam. It made for some interesting dinners.

Looking back, as loud as those arguments became he never made them personal. He would tell me my thinking was flawed but he never attacked me as a person. He told me when I was older I’d look at things differently.

My dad believed in three non-negotiable things.

Your faith in God,

Your family

Your career.

Those were the three things that came before anything else.

I was working third shift when Joan called to tell me my dad had been hospitalized. He’d become violently ill in the middle of the night. It could be his heart. They were running tests. (Turned out to be his gall bladder.)

That morning I reached him in his hospital room. I told him I was going to pack, rest for a bit and head for Milwaukee. He stopped me and said, “You have a family and a job. You take care of them. They come first.”

The last words he spoke to me came two days before he went to be with the Lord. He had an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth and every word was spoken softly. He pulled me close to him, raised the oxygen mask and said

It’s been a good, long life. But gosh, it’s gone by so fast

He was 87.

There was always a sense of who he was and what he had to offer this world. He made no apologies for how he felt or what he believed and deep inside of him was a strong sense of compassion and understanding for just about everyone he met. You didn’t have to agree with him to be his friend.

He’s been gone for seven years. When I look back I’ve always wondered how he came to be so resolute and firm in who he was and what he believed. I believe it was the unshakable confidence he had in himself.

We’ve laughed about it over the years. The three things my mom told us every morning as we walked out the door for school.

As a kid they seemed annoying. Designed as something to inhibit the budding free spirit every adolescent craves. I guess Mark Twain’s old saying about how dumb my parents were at 14 and how smart they became in seven years when I reached 21 was accurate.

My mother was a child of the Great Depression. She was the fifth of six children who lived past infancy. Her father died when she was eleven and she left high school after her sophomore year so she could get a job with health insurance for herself, her mother and the one sibling that remained at home.

She worked in a dairy until she was twenty one when she and my father married. For the next fifteen years or so she worked in our home. During that time she developed a real passion and talent for drawing, painting, china painting, ceramic sculpture and was the best cook and baker I’d ever met.

We even had a kiln in our basement.

My father loved my mother without reservation. In other words, unequivocally. I am still in therapy because he refused to pay the additional twenty five dollars to upgrade my bike from a three-speed to a ten-speed but he paid put a 220 voltage outlet in the basement for my moms kiln.

Somewhere from those experiences in her life came the three things we heard each and every morning – Our marching orders.

Keep your eyes straight ahead. She wanted us to be safe. She wanted us to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible. If you looked to the left or to the right, you’d be tempted to pause and investigate and only God knows who or what was over there. You might get hit on the head and sold to a circus.

You have no opinion. Opinions get you in trouble. Trouble finds the teacher. The teacher call mom. My brother and I would sit on the steps towards our basement trying to figure out which one of us was about to get in trouble. (Most of the time the call was about me!)

You can have all the opinions you want. Just keep them locked tight in your head and you’ll be okay.

Keep your big mouth shut! If you know me, you know this was the suggestion (?) most difficult for me to master. Along with having lots of opinions I was usually pretty vocal in letting the world know what those opinions were.

I’m driving down the road one morning trying to find a way to complete this post. It’s hung here for a few days now and I was getting worried.

Why does Wednesday morning always get here so quickly?

It dawned on me that my mom put stuff out there the way she knew best and what her life experience had taught. I mean, how many kids do you know leave school to be the sole support of their family?

So, while I was sitting in yet another meeting that showed little chance of going anywhere meaningful I re-crafted her three rules of life into what they’d come to mean to me.

Keep growing and keep learning. Keep close watch over what you believe today and always compare it to where you were and where you want to go. Keep your options and your opinions open and closely held.

Choose your counsel wisely. A friend once put it to me like this: There are 3 or 4 people I’d get out of bed for in the middle of the night and get out of jail, no questions asked. They are the people I have learned to trust. A few more who I’d help; but wonder why they called me.

Finally there is everyone else.

I’d tell them I was sorry and go back to sleep.

The moral?

There are those people we’d do anything for. Keep them close and cherish them.

My mom went to be with the Lord January 1 of this year. She, along with her wisdom will be missed.

Is it just me, or do we spend a lot of time investing ourselves in things we are really not committed to begin with?

Did you ever notice it’s never small things?

It always has to be big and significant.

Getting out of debt in one year when our spending habits rival that of a small country and saving and investing is a nice thought.

Loosing fifty pounds and running a triathlon when we haven’t moved off the couch since God was a little boy.

Stuff like that.

What’s really sad is we don’t come up with this stuff on our own. We’re told that if we don’t buy in to these programs there is something wrong with us.

It’s called marketing our pain.

Let me find your tender spot.

Let me show you how everyone else – all the cool kids, are handling life and then wrap it all up by asking:

Don’t ya wanna be just like them?

At some point in time we all did. We wanted to stop pressing our noses against the window and be allowed into the party. We are told they have something we don’t have and for a jar full of magic beans it can be ours.

Some of us, people like you and me, discovered there was a better path.

Living in pain is a really steep price for admission to the party.

Come closer. Just between me and you.

They’re not our goals. They’re the cool kids goals, who BTW really aren’t any cooler than you or I. We’ve just been led to believe we are lacking.

We are Pavlovian in our behaviors. We perform on command. One morning we wake up and we decide right then and there we are going to change how we live and who we are in thirty days or less and we’re mystified when things don’t change.

When we don’t reach the level of peak performance immediately we automatically declare ourselves flawed because, after all, the gurus tell us if we follow a guaranteed, time tested prescription we’ll gain instantaneous success and if we don’t…………..

If we don’t succeed post haste it has to be some sort of fatal, genetic flaw inside of us After all, their process is a seven figure revenue generator. They know whats best for you and I and the universe. They help you identify your pain points and then they throw salt on them until you yell Enough!

We open our wallets, take out a third fourth and fifth mortgage and when everything is not coming up roses we’re told we didn’t read the fine print.

The results, you see, are not guaranteed.

Within that statement lies a tremendous truth.

The only person who can guarantee results in our lives is me and you.

Years ago I attended a seminar and one of the speakers asked us to write ten positive things we identified in ourselves. Things that made us stand out and be successful. We could take as much time as we needed.

Next we were asked to write ten negative things we identified in ourselves and we were given a ninety second time limit.

A show of hands at the conclusion of the exercise told a chilling tale. Hardly anyone, me included, finished the list of positive attributes. Nearly everyone, me included, finished the list of negative attributes in the allotted time and most of us finished early. ( I exceeded the requirement.)

We’ve been conditioned to improve, constantly. It’s never accomplish, savor and enjoy. It’s always move on to the next thing. Nothing is ever good enough. Why are you still sitting there? Don’t work to your strengths. Remove your weaknesses. Nothing is not good enough.

And all that rot

If you’re like me your inbox got flooded with postings during the month of November and December. They exhorted us to begin turning the page in 2019. Time to set goals. Time to change. Time to be the me I always wanted to be. (Sans a few extra pounds I am happy with me!) Time to get with the program. Time to earn six figures in sixty days by building a list of 2000 personal connections overnight.

So is it any wonder, that when we sit down at the keyboard, fingers poised to create greatness, that a small voice deep inside tells us we’re never going to make it anyway. Why bother. You haven’t succeeded before and you wont again.

I am going to ask you to hold my hand and take a huge leap. I am going to ask you to look at the goals you’ve recently set and as yourself this question:

Are these truly my goals? Did I set them with my own unique DNA in mind?

It’s difficult at first to break away from the madding crowd. To reboot, to look at the map and realize it has been upside down for quite some time

Stepping out and charting a course with our specific skills and talents in mind is heady stuff and there probably will be pain and doubt and all that stuff that makes us stronger and wiser.

You may not get there right away but when you do the feeling of accomplishment cant be beat

You’re off to Great Places!You’re off and away! You have brains in your head.You have feet in your shoes.You can steer yourself any direction you choose.You’re on your own. And you know what you know.And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go ~Dr. Seuss

That’s me. I was fifty seven years old and preparing to run in my first 5K. It is the craziest and most self satisfying thing I’ve ever done. Joan and I were walking in the Owensboro Kentucky Barbecue Festival 5K in May of 2010 with some of our kids and their girl friends. Fun times. Somewhere towards the end of the course I saw people running and laughing and having a great time and I thought “I wonder what that would feel like.” So just like that, on a beautiful Saturday morning, I decided I was going to become a runner.

It almost didn’t happen

Hind sight being what it is, I’ve come to realize that I do that a lot – Make quick decisions.

The next Saturday I purchased a pair of good running shoes. One of my sons, an avid runner, went with me and helped me pick out the right pair. I went home, laced them up, walked out on front porch, did some stretching, and started to run down the street. I made it about two hundred yards and everything started to hurt. I was out of breath. Maybe it was my imagination but I swear I saw angels circling over head lighting the path for me to come home.

Ruh-Roh!

What the hell was I thinking? I was bald, paunchy and old. I’d just dropped major coin on a pair of shoes. Maybe I should sneak in the back door and chalk this up to a latent mid life crisis and hope its a month or so before Joan figures out what I paid for the shoes! Here was another adventure circling the drain. Another failure. What the hell was I thinking?

I spent the next few weeks making excuses to myself and the people who kept asking me How’s the running coming along?

The worst part? I’d done everything I was supposed to do! I wrote down my goal. They were specific, measurable, reachable, trackable. All those things.

****Hear crickets chirping****

I was really in a bind. I’d spent close to two hundred dollars on shoes. That’s an awfully expensive folly.

A trainer at my gym saved me. She told me about a program called Couch to 5K. It was an IPhone app designed to get you running five kilometers in 9 weeks. A voice told when the music started to play you should run. When the music stopped playing you should walk.

Even I could do this! Was that a glimmer of hope I saw peaking through the clouds?

Each week increased your run time and by the end of nine weeks you would be running five kilometers. It took me twelve weeks to complete the program because I was in worse shape than I’d imagined.

The practice was simple: The program allowed me to create a series of small goals to attain each week. When I ran more and walked less my confidence increased as well as my stamina. I was more focused and alert. I slept better. I was losing weight. Each week completed was a victory and each week made me want to do even more. I WAS doing this!

Looking back, I’d stopped focusing on the end result and started focusing on the activity I needed to get there.

Reflect on that for a minute before you hurry on. It was a series of small achievements that led to me ultimately reaching my final goal.

It would have been easy to give up and no one would have blamed me. They’d have said “Hey, at your age, at least your tried, ya know.”

You know what excuses are like right? Everybody has one. I’d carried around a whole bag of excuses for not reaching my goals. I almost short circuited because I was focused on running a whole five kilometers when I couldn’t walk to the end of the block.

My mind kept saying: If you cant do it all don’t do any of it!

That’s why ninety two percent of us who set goals don’t reach them. We have no idea or vision what success looks like. We get frustrated and give up. It’s like looking at the world through a shower curtain. Something’s there, you just cant see what it is and you don’t know how to get there!

I couldn’t see myself running the whole distance but when I made it around the block and was still alive something inside of me shouted encouragement. My confidence grew with each achievement.

That’s when I started to see success. It came in a million micro moments. I’d created milestones and landmarks that acknowledged my progress.

One Saturday morning in September of that year Joan and I got in the car and drove two hours for me to compete in my first 5K. I was nervous. You know, the good kind of nervous you get when you are excited about doing something.

I started and I finished and oh yeah, you remember the trainer who gave me the podcast program? A week before I competed she gave me another piece of advice:

Run the race you trained to run.

It would have been easy to get caught up in all the excitement of competing with hundreds of other people and forget my purpose. Her words stuck in my mind all thorough that first race.

I finished, not in record time, but I ran all the way and I was able to finish the race.

Next week I am going to share another tip that can help us reach our goals one hundred percent of the time. It’s going to be a bout the “C” word.